Category: Daily Prompts

S

Small steps.

I nervously moved towards the classroom. Once again, I was the new girl, but this time, I was the new girl who had barely moved to the US. I was the new girl who spoke with a funny accent, and the one who tried to avoid eye contact at all costs. I was the awkward, insecure, lonely new girl.

L

Lonely. Lost. In need of Love.

What hurt the most wasn’t the fact that I was unable to establish a real connection with anyone for over a year, but it was how much I missed feeling loved. See, your family is one thing. You know that they love you (hopefully) and you are so grateful for that, but it is almost as if it’s their job to love you. It feels like they were born to love you. They don’t love you because you’re funny or talented or smart. They simply love you because you’re you. Friends on the other hand, you have to earn their love. They’re not supposed to love you, so when they do it’s special. I missed feeling that someone who wasn’t “genetically” programmed to love me, to do so anyways.

O

Odd.

Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of who I am, and even I forgot how to love myself. I was convinced that I was unworthy of love. I was always the odd one out. I spent lunchtime in the restrooms so that no one would know how lonely I am. I always tried to look busy. During class, when frustration, sadness, loneliness, discomfort, and a million other negative feelings began to build up in me, right when I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore, I would ask to use the restroom just so that I could ball my eyes out. You know there’s something wrong when your diary is the only “person” you talk to.

W

Wake up call.

One day, I had an appointment with my new physician. I don’t quite remember the details, but when my mom left the room for a few seconds, I asked her if I could possibly be referred to a therapist without my mom finding out. She asked me what was wrong and I reluctantly began talking about the painful struggle that was my every day life. At first, I could barely get the words out of my mouth, but once they started rolling I couldn’t stop myself. It was impossible to understand what I was saying because I was sobbing so hard. I was sobbing like I have never sobbed before.

I never went to a therapist. I didn’t want my mom to have any more things to worry about; her plate was already full, but that day, when I got home and when I felt the emptiness inside me that was consuming my whole life, I decided, with no medical credentials whatsoever, that it was official. I was depressed.

L

Leave. Live.

I don’t know how it all happened, but finally after an uncountable number of mental breakdowns, an oceans of shed tears, a couple of self-help books, and perhaps even a miracle – if you believe in that sorta thing – I began to gradually leave that stage of my life behind. I began to come out of my shell. The more I came out, the more I realized how much I have missed living, the more my hunger for life would grow. I had decided that life was hard, but going through it rather than truly living it made it even harder. I was determined to change. I was determined to feel happy. I was determined to live.

Y

Yesterday. Youth.

Things were starting to change for the better. My brother finally found a job and for the first time in years, we had a source of income, but what that meant for me was moving again. More than anything else in the world, I wanted to let go of all the bitter, terrible events of the past. I wanted to forget about the unbearable yesterdays. I wanted to start fresh, and this time I wanted to truly feel like a teenager. I wanted to be stupid and care about small things like a typical teenager. I wanted to flirt with boys and worry about make up like a regular teenager. I wanted to feel young and Carefree.

Slowly

Slowly, things began to change. Slowly, I started laughing more often. You cannot believe how strange it felt to laugh. At times, it felt like I have never done it before. It was so unnatural!

Slowly, I built up my confidence. Slowly, I found people to talk to besides my diary. Slowly, I felt less lost and more in place.

Don’t get me wrong, even to this day I still spend some lunchtimes all by myself because I feel unwanted. Even to this day, I struggle to feel confident and to love myself, but I’ll be ungrateful, nay, blind to say that things aren’t getting better. Life is getting brighter and happier. It is all happening. Slowly, but it sure is all happening.

If you consider yourself a grown-up or a mature person, it doesn’t matter what age you are, at some point in your life you have wished that you could be a kid again, a carefree, bubbly kid. You long for that feeling. It’s kinda like flying, being weightless, or floating.

Call me crazy, but I really do believe that you can feel that way even as an adult. You don’t need to time travel; you just need to find that one thing that gives you that sensation, that one thing that gets you high on being carefree. It can be anything – bicycling, dancing, drawing, meditation, spending time in nature. It really can be anything.

Whatever your thing is, find it and let it take you to places you’ve never been before, to places where time is indefinite or even meaningless, to places where your mind is clear of any thoughts whatsoever. Once you have that one thing, even the moments when you deeply care about something will become valuable. You will be able to endorse and appreciate the things that make your heart beat faster and the ones that you are so passionate about that you cannot help but to care. After all, just as good would be meaningless without bad, happiness without sadness, and laughter without tears, being carefree would mean nothing if you hadn’t known how to care.

Imagine that there are no scientific methods through which you can measure the depth of oceans. For all you know, oceans are infinity-deep-long. The more you go down, the more depth you discover. It is a beautiful, terrifying thing. There may be sharks there or animals so dangerous that they are unheard of for anyone who has ever seen them has been killed.

On the other hand, there may also be heavenly sceneries, ones so aesthetic that you cannot possibly grasp their beauty. The water may fade into a celestial violet. The seaweed may be a magical sparkly pink. The possibilities are endless and predicting them is impossible. The thought of exploring the untouched and the unseen tickles you with thrill down to your very soul. Warm and fuzzy feelings spread all over your body once you try to imagine all the beauty that you are to discover if you dare to explore; however, the thought of possible danger, the fear of the unknown, failure and disappointment hold you back. They make you want to scratch all those jubilant, mesmerizing possibilities out of your head. They make you want to forget all about the neverending depth of the ocean and its mystery so that you can settle for an easy, predictable, risk-free life in the safety of the shore. The final decision is up to you. Who do you want to be? The one who takes a chance against all odds, or the one who never takes any risks and is always left wondering “what if…”

Who do you want to be?? Answering this question doesn’t have to be so complicated. You don’t need to calculate all the odds. You don’t need to plan out your whole journey. After all, the whole point of the first option is for you to open yourself to an ocean of possibilities and welcome every single one of them with hope and joy.

About a year ago, I was looking for a new journal. There were plenty of them with gorgeous designs and wonderful colors – and as you will soon find out, I am a sucker for colorful things. Suddenly, I came across this one that was really plain compared to the other ones. There was nothing extraordinary or eye-catching about its design, but the quote sold it to me. “Life is a story. Make yours a best seller.” This is the very same approach that you should use to address that question with. What if your life was a book? Who do you want your character to be? What do you want your character to be like? Just like an author to a book, you are in absolute and complete control of your life and the direction that it will go in. So take charge, take chances, because just like an ocean, life has an unfathomable depth with endless possibilities. You make what you want out of it.

Dare to explore life to a depth that no one has every experienced before for it is depth that gives your life meaning. Everyone can experience the same unordinary things. What sets you apart and what makes your journey special is the depth to which you dare to explore. As our dear friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson would say, “It is not the length of life, but depth of life.”

How deep is your life?

(Is it like the ocean? What devotion…are you? 😛 😀 )

I challenge you, as I am challenging myself, to try to travel a little deeper every day. Try something new even if it’s small. Little by little, you will explore every cubic inch of the ocean of life as you possibly can, and you will write the most beautiful, best-selling story of your life, one that everyone wants to read, one that everyone wants to live, and most importantly one that you are proud of and has left you with no regrets whatsoever.

Here’s to our best-seller books of life and to the unfathomable depths that we are going to explore.